Keepers of the Orb is a novel I've been working on. It was a comic I drew until I wanted to make it into a novel. There were too may things I wanted to do with Keepers to just have it a comic book. I'm not done writing it, my buddy Phil Avelli is trying to help me finish it.

Check out a few sample chapters and get hooked yourself:

Chapter 3. Dead Everywhere

Phil threw the chainsaw’s strap over his head and shoulder. Dust, dirt and black gore rolled down his wide back. In the same fluid motion he scooped up the glowing ball with his left hand and headed for his house. The dead were following his every move. From a distance he looked like a football player furiously running for a touchdown.

While he was running to his house, he caught sight of more dead coming from his left side. “Damn these things are everywhere!” He turned around to check how far back the other dead things were. They were there, but moving very slowly, clumsily staggering and reaching out as if something was being held just out of their reach pulling them along.

Phil thought to himself, “At least these things are slow, and I can out run them . . . That’s one thing I know.” He jumped from the second step on his front porch over the next four, onto the porch, stretching his right arm out to open the front door. Slamming the front door behind him, he sprinted to his bedroom. Jumping over his bed, he swung his closet door right off it’s hinges and searched for his bowling bag. After Junior High he never thought he would have use for it ever again. Digging past boxes of old comic books, dirty laundry, and a healthy supply of porn, he found it. He dumped the old bowling ball out of the bag and shoved the glowing ball into it, and zipped it up.

He tried to look out of his bedroom window, but it was cluttered with so many dead things pushing and shoving each other to get into the house. He reached for his old bowling ball and felt its weight resting in his hand, “Let’s see if you still got it ‘ol girl.” Phil hurled the ball through the window with all the force of a cannon ball. Glass shattered and the ball blasted through several gray rotted heads like they were wet paper. “STRIKE, Fuckers!” He yelled as he jumped over his bed, through the door, right into the hallway.

He pulled down the attic stairwell and climbed up into the dark. He knew one day he might need an escape route, and being a regular subscriber to “American Mercenary”, he had several, though he thought he’d need it to escape something more like bill collectors than flesh eating undead. This was clearly the best route to use in this situation. He rummaged his way through the dark, so he wouldn’t alert the dead to exactly where he was. He heard windows breaking and doors cracking open. “Shit! They're in my house.” Phil thought to himself.

Knowing exactly where the latch for the trap door was, he threw it open and ran on top of the roof. The house was surrounded and infested with these dead beings. He unhooked a leather strap he had hung on a hook near a thick wire. The wire was attached to a nearby tree. He flung the strap over the wire, grabbed it with one hand, and flew over the army of dead. He needed the vertical direction for the escape to work so he was very close to the ground when he got to the tree. He let go of the strap and fell to the ground. He looked back in horror to see dead things ruining his house. Dead things picking apart his personal items on the front lawn. Dead things smashing all the other windows they missed in order to find him, Dead things screaming and ripping each other apart trying to find him. Dead things everywhere. Unscathed, he ran away from the only home he had ever known.

He fled to the other side of the hill, but there were dead things coming from that direction too. He was surrounded. That’s when he decided to take to the trees at the top of the hill.

24. Subway

Victor put the ORB back into the bowling bag, zipped it up and turned to Phil, "I guess you were right. Maybe I was hearing things."

Phil got up from his seat, walked to the front of the car and knocked on the driver's door. An old, black man opened the door. Sitting in his seat, he looked up at Phil from behind his thick glasses. It looked like the glasses were so thick that he couldn't see with them or without them.

With very sleepy eyes the man looked unconcerned, "Yes?"

Phil asked him, "Has anybody been on the train today?"

The tag on his shirt said Keith; "I really haven't been paying much attention. I worked all last night, and I'm doing a double, because the guy that was supposed to come in and work after me never showed. I also heard that some of the other employees haven't shown up, so I'm sure the other guys are in the same boat as me. I'm supposed to work tonight, but I'm exhausted. This city's gonna be fucked. I need sleep. But to answer your question, yeah, it's been a slow day, Must be some kinda Holiday or somethin’.”

Phil asked, "Then I guess you haven't seen any dead things boarding this train."

Keith’s face wrinkled up more than normal, "Dead things?"

Phil rolled his eyes realizing he was probably wasting his time, "Yeah, Dead things. If you saw these things, you'd know it. Do you have a radio?"

Keith looked around the control booth, "No, I don't use one down here, cause I can't get any stations to come through."

Phil nodded "Thanks for your time."

Keith waved his hand slowly from side to side sleepily. "Righty-o", he muttered and closed his door.

Phil made his way back, sat down next to Victor and asked, "What stop are we getting off at?"

Victor turned his head and looked up at the lit sign showing the subway line and all the stops along the way. "Where are we now?"

Phil also looked up to the sign, "68th St."

"It's the next one.” Victor stood up and walked over to the sliding doors waiting for the train to stop. “Heay, remember when you said we needed a plan, well, I got lots of money. Whatever you think we need, or wherever you think we need to go we can do whatever."

Phil shrugged, "I don't know, but I want to be as far away from those dead things as possible!"

"That's a given." Victor responded.

"I got some cash stashed away in the apartment."

"Cool. But won't the law be looking for us?" Phil asked the obvious.

"I suppose they will. I’m guessing they are pretty busy being EATEN by now though. We should check out the news and get an idea of what's been seen and what hasn't been seen."

“Yeah that's true”, Phil agreed.

"I asked that guy if he had a radio, so we could check the news, but he said the reception sucks down here."

Victor kept watching the blur of the subway walls as they rode by. They were beginning to slow down. "Well we'll find out later. We got bigger problems to deal with."

Phil stood up and picked up the bag, "How is your friend gonna be able to help us?"

"Let me just say, she's in touch with the universe."

"Aw shit. A psychic?"

"No.”, Victor assured him, “she's just had a lot of things happen to her in her life, and kinda knows when things are getting weird. She doesn't like doing it too much for anyone, because people think she's full of shit, but in this circumstance, I think she'll help out. When I show her this ORB she'll definitely help."

Phil instinctively gripped the handle on the bowling bag tighter. "Do you think it would be wise to show her the ORB?"

Victor thought for a second, and shook his head. "Maybe your right, I hadn't thought ahead. The outcome might not be so good."

The train grinded to a stop, the squeal of metal on metal echoed through the empty station. The doors opened and Victor and Phil stepped out leaving the only place they had been able to find rest for almost a day and a half. The brick walls were coated with grime from decades of neglect, and the trash scattered across the floor was their only company. The station was abandoned, it wasn’t a busy stop normally but this was ridiculous. Phil’s head swiveled left to right expecting to be ambushed from either side at any time. Victor looked ahead to the stairway leading to the street. Daylight streamed in showing them the way.